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I imagine the K22 shook up the woods a bit.

It never took more than 10 minutes or so for the woods to settle down after a .22 short came out of any of my rifles. If it was during a gentle rain, it took no more than five minutes.
More than once I fired a long rifle round off, and the woods didn�t really settle down. I would get tired of waiting and move on.
I could and did make a killer Brunswick stew back in the day, You know it�s good if your girlfriend eats it and asks for seconds.

Best,
Ted

It didn't matter much about the noise, Ted. The little fice dog would have another treed in a matter of minutes. All she wanted to do was grab the squirrel when it hit the ground and shake it a few times. Then, she was off to find another. Good squirrel dogs are valuable things down here.

It's an entirely different type of hunting than the quiet slipping through the woods, but great fun with a good companero.

SRH

Ted;
My experience in the squirrel woods somewhat mirrors yours. However, in my experience, the Dividing line is not so much total noise as it is the Sonic Crack.
I have many times been beneath a tree which the Squirrels were working with several under it, pick one off using those standard vel LR's & the rest not even quit cutting. I did a lot of my hunting early while the leaves were still on, so I would then just start trying to get enough view of another to line up on. If they did stop, as you say would be only a very few minutes until they were back at work, if you didn't otherwise disturb them. Have even had the same results when I was using a shotgun as long as it was one of the lower velocity loads.

Normally one shot from a Hi-Speed .22 LR with its Sonic Crack would Clear the Tree in short order. As long as I stayed with the lower velocity LR's I had no more concern over the noise level than with shorts. In this regard, a pistol would be louder, but slower so one would not have the Crack.

Stan;
I built a .32 cal long rifle particularly to squirrel hunt with. It was plenty accurate with round balls for the job but could not be loaded for the 2nd shot without cleaning when using light loads. There would be a spot where apparently the powder was all burned up that would leave a big amount of fouling. By incrementally increasing the load that spot moved accordingly toward the muzzle. It didn't move out of the muzzle until somewhere around 50 grains of 3F. Velocity was so high it simply devastated a squirrel.

I then put a .45 caliber barrel on it, still with a round ball twist, & amazingly I could load it down to 20 grains & shoot it all day. It was much less destructive on a squirrel than was the .32 with the Hot Loads. It was accurate enough you could simply behead a squirrel & waste not an iota of meat unless one is a brain & tongue eater. It was also subsonic & would not clear a tree either, even though much louder than a .22 of any sort. The heavy loaded .32 had a Sharp Crack to it.

Miller, I understand the fouling problem, but I didn't have it that bad. However, it has always been my practice to run a spit dampened patch down the bore and then a dry one before reloading. I used flannel patches cut out of my old wornout work shirts.

I may have told this before, but one Thanksgiving, about 1992, my youngest son and I were squirrel hunting that morning. It was a terrible day for squirrels, being very windy. We walked up on a pretty beaver pond and were standing there by it thinking of the possibility of killing some woodies in it later. Just then, on the opposite side, a buck jumped up out of his bed and began to run downstream to our right. My son said, "shoot him Daddy! " I had the set trigger already set, and as I brought the rifle up I brought it to full cock. As I swung the front sight ahead of the running buck I was thinking that only a head shot would kill him, with that light load and little ball. So I swung it out ahead of him and touched the front trigger. Smoke blotted out everything, and I naturally assumed I had missed because I couldn't see him after the smoke cleared. I reloaded, we crossed on a beaver dam, and there he lay, shot through the neck. It was nearly an eighty yard shot, and the low velocity ball had dropped so much that what I meant for a head shot turned into a neck shot.

I grew several feet in stature in my boy's eyes that day!

SRH

I got it all put back together:



This is a first year 581. The first 6 months production had walnut stocks, and no serial numbers. The second 6 months had serial numbers, and African striped mahogany stocks, like this one. 1968 and after got birch and sometimes cherry, if they ran out of birch. This gun has had the barrel shortened about an inch, a target crown cut into the barrel, and the sight removed. It has to have a scope, and it is outstandingly accurate.

I went to the range to sight it in, and about three cars loads of Border and Customs enforcement had descended on the place to qualify and practice. The range folk would have made room for me, but, I told them to keep shooting, what they were doing was far more important than what I was doing, and I just live down the street.
I�ll be back.

My current Setter would be an outstanding squirrel dog, but, I don�t encourage her, or shoot mammals over bird dogs.

Miller, I have killed few, or, maybe no squirrels with a shotgun, but, a shotgun going off would scatter squirrels from what I have seen. When I was in the game, I had a run of good luck finding .22 short ammunition at garage sales, or, having my Mother keep her eye open at same. I had a bunch of it, none was new, and I didn�t know anything about sub sonic loads until years later.
Best,
Ted